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HISTORY OF ALPENA COUNTY BY WILLIAM BOULTON IN 1876
The site of Bolton & McRae's brick block was then unoccupied, its chief decorations being burnt pine stumps. Wages averaged from $35 to $40 per month and board;. money was plentiful, and the only liquor allowed to be sold openly was Wahoo bitters and Sam's "fighting cider. " Many of the residents will probably remember the fighting cider, for it was a common saying among the boys that a smell of the fighting cider forty rods off would cause a man to show his pugnacity. Although whisky, etc., was not allowed to be sold openly, yet, if a man wanted a drink and was willing to pay accordingly for it. he could get it. For a certain money consideration a man would be informed where, at the side of a particular stump, in such and such a place, he could find a bottle of the ardent liquor embedded in the sand, and a number of bottles were thus found. How they came there is of course a mystery, for it is something out of the course of nature to grow glass bottles full of Canada whisky with the duty unpaid.
The only amusements were dancing and sail-boat excursions to some of the islands.
The principal diet was pork, beans, and black-strap for breakfast; beans, pork, and black-strap for dinner, and a sort of medley for supper. The above diet was further embellished by cookies and salt mule (as the beef was termed), and, occasionally, a feast of hot rolls. Later in the summer, we remember attending a patriotic meeting, held in the court-house, the object being to get volunteers to represent Alpena at the battle fields in the south— the call was not in vain. There was no regular steamboat communication between Alpena and the lower ports, as the Columbia was taken off the route some time before, but near the latter part of the summer of 1864, the propeller Genesee Chief began to make regular trips between Alpena and Detroit, and thus inaugurated a regular steamboat communication during the season of navigation.
Michigan
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